Desert So Green, by Winged Wheel

Desert So Green

by Winged Wheel

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Kenneth Pyron The vibe is awesome! Constant movement, feeling relaxed at the same time. Also, a 'This Heat' feel on a couple of these gems. This is my go-to for road travel.

The Tonearm "I was mostly just riding this wave of excitement. Then, when we started playing shows and actually became friends and musical collaborators, that's when it got even deeper. This new record is probably the best example of our musical communication."

Check out our interview with Winged Wheel on The Tonearm ✨→ www.thetonearm.com/from-default-to-deliberate-learning-to-listen-with-winged-wheel/ Favorite track: Canvas 2.

Cold Lips of Bliss It’s only January, and therefore far too early to say this is one of my favourite albums of the year. But we are now more than half way through the 2020s; so, I can say with some confidence that this is one of my favourite albums of the decade. Spacious, suggestive, mesmerising post-rock goodness.

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

$9 USD or more
140 gr. black vinyl LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
pressed at Smashed Plastic, Chicago
included redundant download code

Includes unlimited streaming of Desert So Green via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

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1.	Canvas 11 06:00	buy track
2.	Canvas 2 03:23	buy track
3.	Speed Table 03:04	buy track
4.	More Frog Poems 05:21	buy track
5.	Beautiful Holy Jewel Home 04:47	buy track
6.	Canvas 8 06:01	buy track
7.	Bird Spells 05:39	buy track
8.	I See Poseurs Every Day 03:16	buy track
9.	The Suite Goes Quiet 04:40	buy track

about

“So, how did this band even happen?” That’s the question most often asked of Winged Wheel, a creatively and geographically scattered collective who have somehow congregated to make a noise that’s unexpected but undeniable. The band includes Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Circuit des Yeux), Cory Plump (Spray Paint, co-owner of the dream venue Tubby’s), Matthew J. Rolin (solo guitar wizard and half of the Powers/Rolin Duo), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lonnie Slack, and Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Tyvek), each player living in a different city and bringing their own unique element to the group’s chain reactions. Early long distance file-trading between a few members yielded 2022’s No Island, a debut album that was accidentally really good. Good enough for the band to expand their membership and meet in person for the sessions that became 2024’s Big Hotel, a surgically-assembled murk of high energy kosmische rock with jammed-out tendencies. Fast forward just a little and all of a sudden the band that started out as a passing idea has completed multiple tours, become a taper’s dream with sets that drift through structure and improvisation, and ridden the momentum to places unforeseen on their third album, Desert So Green.

After a run of shows across the Midwest in the spring of 2025, the group settled into a studio on the outskirts of Chicago to track their next record. Though the full lineup had only been solidified for a little over a year at this point, time together on stage led to a quickly-expanding sound and a unified vision of always going somewhere new. To this end, Winged Wheel abandoned the play-now-sort-it-out-later approach of Big Hotel and instead spent hours refining flashes of inspiration into coherent songs. Full-blast, krautrock-informed jamming took a backseat to deeper experimentation, and the band found new dimensions, different atmospheres. The arrangements are still dense with layers of synths, noisy disruptions, and glowing orbs of alien sound, but every shift is considered and intentional. It’s an album that spends its duration struggling to balance a scale with excitement on one side and anxious tension on the other. Things move a little slower and the aftershock hits harder than the initial adrenaline rush.

While Desert So Green is defined by a newfound restraint, there’s also an intensity that never lets up. “Bird Spells” pulsates perpetually at the edge of a breaking point, moving through various storm systems before finally, momentarily, finding a break in the clouds. Can-esque rhythms, scrapes of viola, and Throbbing Gristle-level decay all get dubbed into infinity on the absolutely demonic “Canvas 2.” Rolling waves of percussion and treated instruments try fruitlessly to climb their way out of a slippery well on the churning closer “The Suite Goes Quiet.” At times, some ripping weirdness cuts through the simmering. Syncopated dual guitars lock in on “Speed Table” while Shelley destroys the kit as only he can, and Slack’s greasy steel guitar riffing of “I See Poseurs Every Day” evokes scenes of a truck stop showdown between ZZ Top and the Silver Apples. “Beautiful Holy Jewel Home” is the closest Winged Wheel has ever come to straightforward melodic tuneage, and it still arrives in a form that’s uneasy and fragmented.

Desert So Green represents yet another transformation for Winged Wheel, one that takes them into a space of sharpened dynamism and more nuanced expression. The energy that arrived all at once in loud explosions on earlier albums is refracted here, and all the more powerful when broken down. It’s a set of strange songs that demand close inspection and reward this attention with a clearer view of the band’s individual personalities, and the separate alchemical presence that emerges when these personalities come together. Desert So Green changes gears, defies probability, confounds in strains of joy and confusion, and leaves us wondering, once again and still without answers, how did this band even happen?

credits

released January 9, 2026

Winged Wheel :
Whitney Johnson
Cory Plump
Matthew J. Rolin
Steve Shelley
Lonnie Slack
Fred Thomas

Recorded at Rec Room Studios, Chicago IL bu Eric Block, May 2025
Cover art by Abel Burger
Mastered by Carl Saff

P&C Winged Wheel 2026 under license to 12XU

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Winged Wheel Detroit, Michigan

Winged Wheel :
Whitney Johnson
Cory Plump
Matthew J Rolin
Steve Shelley
Lonnie "Palmtree" Slack
Fred Thomas

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Desert So Green

by Winged Wheel

second pressing - 140 gr. black vinyl LP Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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Digital Album Streaming + Download

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

$23 USD or more

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140 gr. black vinyl LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album